Recently, I reviewed the Gray Diagnostic Reading Battery-Second Edition for The Seventeenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. In the Gray’s manual was a wonderful quote that’s so important, it’s worth memorizing: “Too often examiners forget the dictum that ‘tests don’t diagnose, people do’ and base their diagnoses exclusively on test results, a hazardous enterprise at best. Test results are merely observations, not diagnoses. They specify a performance level at a given time under a particular situation, but they do not tell the examiner why a person performs as he or she did.”
Scores alone don’t tell you if the child with reading disabilities paid attention, gave up quickly, or had comprehension problems because he read in a slow, laborious fashion. And scores alone don’t tell you the amount of error associated with the score. They don’t tell you that a grade equivalent of 4.3 is no better than one of 4.1, as the error for these scores makes them equivalent. Nor does the grade equivalent of 4.3 tell you that many disabled readers with this score cannot read fourth grade materials. And some would struggle with third grade materials.
Yet too often learning consultants, reading specialists, and school psychologists report scores as if they are absolute and definitive—they’re not. Without a knowledgeable interpretation of test results and ongoing monitoring of progress, children with reading disabilities are unlikely to make meaningful progress. So, if the results are not knowledgeably interpreted, ask the school to have someone do so and make recommendations that will help your child and his teachers.
HM
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